p. 119 | Liberty Is Law: Bright Eyes on Justice

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Thursday, February 19, 1880.

FromThe Review and Herald, Vol. 55, No. 8

Liberty Is Law: Bright Eyes on Justice

—Bright Eyes, the Indian girl whose appeals in behalf of her people have been so earnest and stirring, recently spoke two sentences which the Christian at Work thinks are worthy to rank with the grand utterances of our most able statesmen. The sentiment is this: “What I ask for my countrymen is liberty; and liberty is law.” This is true in the political world. The object of law is to protect individual rights, and to regulate public affairs; and those nations that are governed by the wisest and most wholesome laws enjoy in the greatest degree the blessings of peace and prosperity. But how is it in the moral world? Are those persons who seek to bring their lives into conformity to the law of God under a “yoke of bondage?” Is the Almighty less capable of instituting wise laws for the proper regulation of human lives, than are erring men for the right government of nations? No; God’s moral law is what James calls it, “a law of liberty.”